BFRO exped NC 2007

May 15 - 20

TUESDAY
I got there Tuesday night near sundown. Met up with the Nuters (father and son). Set up my tent in the dark. No moon and lots of canopy. There was no canopy on our recon trips to that spot! Slept fitfully the first night. Throughout the night, I woke up and heard some things, mostly around 4 am and later. Heard one wood knock. Four in a row, fast. Not hard, not loud. Not the home run type crack/thud. Not the rock on tree thud. More like a smaller branch against a tree, and not so hard. As if the recipient wasn't that far, and was trying not to alert sleeping campers. At one point I heard this grunting noise uphill from my tent: UrnnGH-uh UrnnGH-uh UrnnGH-uh

Much later, I concluded that we did have black bear in the area, but that wasn't all.


WEDNESDAY

Don't remember what I did in the early part of the evening. Didn't do much during the day except talk to Pam and go over the hill to what would be the Tart overnight camp (where Don Tart and his son set up a satellite camp) later in the week. While at [the creek], looking at deer tracks in a patch of black muck, I thought I spotted two small footprints. They weren't by boots or shoes, and they had big round heels and flat arches. I wasn't sure about toe marks, but Pam thought she saw scrape marks where the toes slid in. It was just two side by side prints \ /, like a child had stood there. Told some other folks about these mostly featureless impressions, and nobody seemed interested, and the SuperSleuth crew did go down there the next day and held a tracking class, so I assume if they were worthwhile they would have noticed them. I tried to peek at that spot the night all the people visited the Tart campsite but didn't see them and wasn't sure if I had the right spot of muck.


WEDNESDAY NIGHT:

Folks were headed out to South Power Lines camp (SPL). David Pardue and I showed up last. It was a dark and stormy night. We saw/smelled nothing on the way. We got to SPL site and heard the flute and drums sounds from Chip's big truck.

A gang of us formed up and hiked down a forest road in the dark. After a while, we stopped and started making noises. Lots of various noises, some of them silly. Eventually, we got a response from... something. The middle of it sounded like a coyote. It had a yip yip yip to it, but the first part of it had some real bellow to it, probably more bass to it. That first second or two sounded mighty bellicose & insistent. Then it trailed off, after the yips, to something that could have been a coyote or squatch. We didn't record anything. :

We went back to the campfire area, sat around and talked. At one point, the girls made a lot of girly giggling noises to see what would happen, and it worked. It sounded like a log being slammed against the ground, a lot like what we heard at the WV '06 expedition. Didn't hear anything being picked up, just heard something slamming into the ground, like a tree fell over.

Some of us eventually spotted something in the powerline cut. It wasn't a huge cut with big angle-iron type towers, this was about the width of a gravel road and with wooden telephone poles down the center. It looked like things were moving about 75 yards up the hill, at the crest of the hill that the powerline cut climbed from the grassy field we were in. The next day, I'd find the range was more like 125 yards.

There was no moon. There was some starlight, or maybe some atmospheric reflection from a small town nearby, and some cloud cover. So looking up the power line cut was a bit like looking at a gunsight. It should have been a U-shaped notch with right angle corners, so we called it the "U-trail." But you'd stare at it and sometimes the corners changed shape, as the powerline cut crested the hill, as if some things were standing at the inside edges of the U. Low light conditions. I used only my naked eye. Other folks used their NV and I encouraged others to get their binoculars, which also worked. Seemed to be a taller figure on right side of U, moving out from the brush, but not wanting to stand in the middle of the cut, and then a smaller figure on the right side doing the same thing.

Patty got tingles, and many folks smelled a urine oder. I never got that far up the cut. I was moving as stealthily as I could behind Patty and her gang. I didn't think that group needed another male with it so conspicuously.

I got to their spot from a location blind to the view from the crest of the hill, and then crawled up the left side of the cut.

There may have been one close to our group, because not only was there a pee funk all star in the area, but Patty and Stacey got a tingly zap. After that we all moved back to the fire.

Later we left the SPL site, leaving Chip to tend the fire and spend the night alone. We got back to base camp and told people what happened and griped about not having the thermal cams.

I had my boots off and was getting into the sack when Chip pulled into camp and said he had three rocks thrown from three diferent directions and he bailed. So we all saddled up, this time with Matt & thermals, and Rick (recently returned from Afghanistan), and went back.

Parked about 1/2 mi W and moved in fairly quietly on foot. David P. & Rick heard something in the brush and David said he saw a figure. Matt later went in to that spot and David said Matt was a few feet shy of the height. I manned the thermal at one point and saw... a bunny rabbit, we think.

THURSDAY AFTERNOON
Went over to SPL again in daylight to see what we could see. David P. and I went into the woods near where we heard the bellow/barking/howl noise. Found some possible tree/stick structures. Not sure. Then at one point, I found what looked a lot like a tipi formation. More on that in another post.

THURSDAY NIGHT
I was at my campsite getting my gear ready. The sun had gone down but it wasn't completely dark. I coulda sworn I heard footsteps in the leaf litter right outside my campsite, in a straight line, angling away from camp, not 40 feet from me. I'd never heard the footsteps in the dark that other folks had heard on the recon trips to this site. This time, I'm fairly certain I did.\

Buddy of mine showed up to hang out with me. I took him along and went with Tommy P., Rick, Barry. Went up to North Power Lines (NPL). It very dark, and the quietest night I've ever been on with the BFRO.

We didn't use the campsite we wanted to because apparently a couple of backpackers were there. Game cameras later showed more backpacker traffic during the day along the trail, but nothing at night except our people.

We found another spot too far away. |I made some sounds. Nothing responded. Rick and Tommy P. set up a mere 50 feet N on the hilltop to serve as a listening post. It got breezy that night, wind coming down the mountain. I didn't hear a thing. The listenning post thought they heard a distant howl to the north or east of that mountain. I didn't hear it.

We cleared most of the leaves out of a campfire ring we found and had a fire for an hour and talked BF. Very dry leaf litter, lots of it. We did worry about a forest fire, because of the wind and the dry leaf litter.

No noises on our perimeter, and nothing stalked us out. But twice on the night movement we smelled the earthy/barnyard funk, once or twice on the way in. We didn't stop for long.

On the way back, almost to the trailhead, we stood still in the dark for about 10 minutes, heard nothing. Knowing what I now know, I wonder if we were smelling bear.

Can't recall what I did with the rest of Thursday night.


FRIDAY
Drove to shower at the park. Worth the drive!


FRIDAY EVENING
30 minutes before sundown or so, I took my buddy Tom up the forest road from base camp to show him a possible X formation and some other possible stick structures/patterns. At the right hand turn where the road heads up the hill some more and the sign says [the name of the trail] my buddy Tom spotted a 3-log structure in the brush about 30 feet to the S of the intersection. We walked in and looked at it, and it sure looked like one long, straight, dead tree had been snapped into the pieces used to make this tripod.

Went with Ken W. and son, and my buddy Tom, to a clearcut that Ken had found that looked south at [a particular mountain] about a mile away. Nice clearcut, great acoustics for my howling. Tommy P., Rick and Barry were over at NPL near [the mountain] this night, I believe.

Much to my chagrin, the radio contact was very spotty between the various camps, even though we were on high ground in that clearcut. Everybody set up chairs and such at the top of the hill, but out of sight of the road, and I moved down into the clearcut in the fading light, just wanting to take a look around. I spooked something. Something about 80 yards to my SE barreled through the brush in this clearcut. I couldn't see a danged thing. Once again, no NV, no binocs. It sure sounded like the "bulldozer retreating away from you" but chances are it was a bear or couple of deer.

Did some [mimicking sounds] Great ones, if I do say so myself. There was a babbling creek about 80 yards to my right and that started to play games with my mind, as did the tall trees on the edge of the cut waving in the breeze. Just like the night before at [a particular mountain] --a bit too breezy to hear at that time of night.

But I think I heard some response thuds. One from the SE corner of the large clearcut, and another from the SW corner. Three times each, just thudding. Could have been stomping. It was very distant on the breeze.

I was sitting by myself about 75 yards down the hill from the rest of our guys, and starting to worry about being alone & exposed in the dark with so much scrub brush around me, so I went back to the group. Ken & I did hear two distant howls due East, but I think they were hound dogs on private land.

Drove down to SPL site to what was going on there. Found other campers and wound up doing a U. Went back to base, took Tom up the hill in the dark and over to Don Tart's satellite camp by the creek. It was getting late and brisk by this point, and some time spent by Don's big campfire was nice. We'd missed all the fun here, too.

Went back up and over the hill to basecamp without incident.

SATURDAY AFTERNOON
Went down the trail from the trailhead, downhill into the pine needle duff. That had always caught my eye. Looked odd, how so many large trees had fallen across an obvious trail, a trail that had obviously once been a Jeep trail, and still looked like worn in trail in some ways. We went down there en masse.

The first 75 yards or so, that trail was quite worn in. Still pine duff, no mud or deer prints, just a compressed kind of trail. Then it petered out into a deer-only kind of trail, and hit a creek. Glad I went down that trail, though. Later events seemed to suggest it was a pathway.

Went up the hill to look at more possible old formations. Showed David P. and Olof the three-log structure that Tom had found the night before. While up there we also found the possible bedding area that Rolf had told me about earlier. David said they were kidney shaped and were near deer bedding spots.

Went back to camp and ate and laid down for a while, resting up. David & Olof scouted north of the forest road -- something we'd never gotten around to. Said they found what way have been remnants of stick formations.


SATURDAY NIGHT
Jeep trail knob, not far from camp at all. That trip was going to be me & Olof & David, then Ken W. & son tagged along. Went up at dusk. I'd looked at the Jeep trail that went straight up this hill many a time and wondered what it was like on top of that knob. Wondered if squatches liked to howl from a vantage point like that. That was Olof's plan - to call blast from there.

We tromped up like a herd of elephants (dry leaf litter) and set up chairs. Olof set up his parabolic mic. Having learned from Rick & Tommy P., I decided to sit apart from the group so I could hear better. I went over and sat behind a large tree, leaning against the trunk.

We weren't there long before David said that he was seeing things on the thermal. The sky wasn't even completely dark to the west yet. I could hear something approaching, from a distance, directly behind us. We could hear it come down from the N side of the knob, and make a steady, deliberate stroll in a straight line. I heard it all.

I radioed to David, "Am I hearing what I think I'm hearing?" but he didn't reply. He was too focused on trying to spot one with the thermal cam. We listenned quietly. I think I dozed off. I was bored. I tried not to move much, but had to change positions occassionally. For a good long while, the big walker did not make another sound and could not be found on the thermals.

But for the radio traffic, I had little clue what was going on with the other guys. I was eventually called over to join David & Olof, and learned that the Websters (father and son) had retreated after the boy spotted a squatch through the thermal, only a few moments before, moving laterally away from them and down the hill. Good thing he was not the only one to see it, otherwise no one would have believed him.

I volunteered to go back to base camp and get a helmet cam from Matt. What was a simple, easy 150 yd stroll up the forest road an hour or so earlier, sure seemed a lot lonelier all by myself in the dark.

I got to Matt's HQ, but he got called away because Dave's wife was saying she was hearing movement of something large behind their campsite as she sat by a campfire with Maggie S.

After 15 or 20 minutes of standing around, David & Olof radioed to me to come up to the jeep trail knob with whatever gear I had because they were getting a bad feeling up there. They didn't say they were getting zapped, but rather just getting a really bad vibe, which came on to both of them suddenly, and having been up there for a long while with no problems.

I started marching back out of camp, then they asked me to double time it, so I started running up the forest road. When I reached the base of the hill I asked them if they wanted me to run noisily. They said yes. So I clomped as best I could, and kicked all small rocks in my way. They started nagging me, "Are you here yet? Where are you?"

By this point, I'm starting to figure out that they're very uncomfortable for some reason, and now I have to try to run up a steep Jeep trail (logging skid road) toward them. I stomped up the hill as best I could, got my pack, my chair, and we all went back down the hill with white LED headlmaps going.

Almost back to the trail, David and Olof both stopped and said a softball-sized rock flew behind me and in front of him and rolled on the ground. Was this a send-off gesture?

David was ready to stay up all night again. Me, I usually don't, but after hearing about them both getting a sudden strange vibe, being zapped & creeped out up there, I was motivated. I stayed up with David.

Lots of branch snapping in the perimeter behind David's campsite. Esp. over by the outhouse and Keith's tent. Stevie the Wonder Dog got loose from his leash and was worriedly patrolling the perimeter road of the campsite. She appeared to be searching for Keith. She was not interested in being petted, not one bit.

SATURDAY WEE HOURS

Between 3 and 6 AM, David and I heard some more stuff. At one point it sounded like rock was hurled into the campsite from the west side, over by Matt's HQ. That's where the main cooking area was, and where everyone hung out for a while after we all came off the knob, and that's where most of the females were camped, and that's where it was darkest. There were no lanterns on over there. Whereas, Don T's site had a lantering going, and so did David's camp site.

We also heard some quick, heavy footsteps on the gravel road, just once or twice. Three steps, it sounded like. Quick. At one point as the skies lightened, a whipporwhil was being a fool over near the outhouse area. If finally shut up. As the skies lightened and the night was ending, the same dog we heard freaking out down by the nearest cluster of houses at 8:45 pm was doing it again. We had noticed the same thing before. That dogs freaks out for a little while not long after it gets very dark, and then again as dawn approaches.


SUNDAY
Lots of resting, eating, gabbing in camp. I eventually went over to the eastern site. I noticed a lot of overturned rocks. Olaf thought a bear was doing it. Then I went to look at an odd pattern of rocks on edge of road, which looked like the pattern of evenly spaced rocks on the side of the road by the North Powerlines location. I photographed them.

I remembered seeing something similar on the previous NC expedition in the mountains of Western NC. Could have been done by a human, but there was no obvious reason for it. I also saw and photographed an odd chunk log on top of a rock, right next to the road.

[Further discussion about specific location omitted]